Basements Are Stupid and I'm Over Them
The world's most expensive hot shower
I've had an entire week to get a post done for today. Two weeks, actually, since my post last week was just to explain my new lesser posting schedule. Still, I'm struggling to get anything done. I currently have five half-completed essays on topics that I care about, but I just can't seem to find the words to finish them.
I'm not burned out with the process of posting on here. In fact, I look forward to it every time I sit down to write. The rush I get from actually posting and having you all read it isn't gone yet, either. So why am I finding it so hard to get my words out?
I think it's because it's hard to talk about silly topics while I worry about the world and what it is becoming. I certainly had no problem with writing my rant post for Poetry Sunday. And that's because I was, and still am, incredibly passionate about what's going on right now.
But I don't want this to become a political rant blog. There is no shortage of those, and it's not like I have that much of a new or different perspective to offer. Besides, I don't want to have to think about the potential societal collapse any more than I have to.
Instead, I just want to bitch about water heaters. Sunday afternoon my wife heard noise like water coming out of a faucet in the basement. When the sound was investigated, we found a ton of water in the utility room. Naturally, since temperatures had been below 0 for a week, I suspected it was a burst pipe.
The bedroom on the other side of the wall from the utility room was soaked. Water was up the walls, in the carpet, and seeping through some stuff we had stored in the closet. It was a mess. So I called our homeowners insurance. I assumed a burst pipe would be covered, as well as the damage to that room. I was correct, burst pipes from freezing were covered.
So I called a plumber, one I knew would come out ASAP even though I knew they were not the cheapest, at the behest of my insurance company. Well, guess what. It wasn’t a burst pipe; it was the stupid water heater. It was $3,500 to replace that, because, like every other fucking thing in this house built during Eisenhower’s presidency, the whole ventilation system was not up to code. I maybe could have gotten a better deal by waiting, but there was no guarantee when a different company would have come out to fix it.
As it turns out, and as I definitely suspected, the water heater replacement will not be covered by my homeowners insurance. So now, not only am I down $3,500, but likely down another $2,500 (my deductible) to fix the walls and carpeting in that bedroom that was flooded.
This all is frustrating enough, but here is what is most frustrating to me. Water heater design! Apparently what happened was the temperature gauge on the water heater broke and was heating water way too hot. Because of this, the pressure in the tank would build up. To relieve this pressure, and not cause an explosion, the water heater has a pipe (THAT LEADS DIRECTLY TO THE FUCKING FLOOR) to drain water out until temps are stabilized. There’s no fucking drain there for this water to go into. It just goes onto the floor of my damn basement!
Were people in the 1950s just too fucking stupid to install drains? Perhaps they just enjoyed having an underground splashpark? Or was this an innovation that came many years later and there already was no floor drain? Either way I absolutely despise all of this. I’d rather take a cold shower.
Basements are stupid and I’m over them.
“i’d rather take a cold shower” was really the perfect ending